I just happened to be parked near a Mazda dealer today so decided to have a sit in a couple of versions of the Mazda 3 hatch.
Yes, the quality is impressive with all the soft touch materials and stuff but so dark! With the big C pillar and jet black trim including headlining felt like a cave to me. If I'd gone that way I would have had to option red or some other colour seats.
It's all academic anyway, it suffers from the same issue as the new Corolla. Boot is way too small for us.. Maybe the sedan would be a bit better with larger back windows and a bigger boot. They didn't have one available to look at.